gal-dem: Lipsing in the club or more broken promises?
Three reactions to Boris Johnson’s recovery roadmap
full article here
The roadmap sceptic - writer Dhruti Modha
No one wants to be or hear a naysayer, especially when this is the first glimmer of hope we’ve been given in a godawful year but I’m nervous about this roadmap. I’ve seen everyone’s tweets and I don’t want us all to be disappointed on 21 June if we’re not lipsing in the club.
I’ve worked in communications for a few London authorities, and I’ve felt the chaos of scrambling to deliver a semblance of certainty to the public, sometimes with hour-by-hour changes or convenient ‘leaks’ from central government.
I’ve watched No. 10 attempt to deal with these issues and prioritise saving face (promising and failing to deliver Christmas) at the expense of the safety of working class people, especially those of colour (Eat Out to Help Out and the general lack of accessible financial support).
With this new roadmap, it’s now being proposed that we’ll have four steps, approximately five weeks each apart. That’s memorable – great. This is more of a slow-burn approach than this administration has come out with previously and it gives the impression of feeling more thought-out.
Still, in the briefing for local authority comms teams from No. 10 on Monday 22 February, the emphasis was on data, not dates – these aren’t set in stone and will be adjusted according to infection rates, they say.
“There’s a chance that saving face, and more crucially winning votes in time for local elections in May, will once again have taken priority over peoples’ lives”
I’d love to believe that, but if it’s true it means that this plan could take longer than we initially think it will and we’ll have to grit our teeth at another undelivered promise.
If it isn’t true and they move forward despite increased infection, it means there’s a chance that saving face, and more crucially winning votes in time for local elections in May, will once again have taken priority over peoples’ lives. Yet another undelivered promise will reflect very badly on the socially-distanced campaign trail.
This administration has been handling the pandemic with the same zippy campaigning slogans as it used in the December 2019 elections: Get Brexit Done has morphed into Hands, Face, Space. Great application of the rule-of-three but people can sense that it’s all style and no substance. Is it really ‘lockdown fatigue’ so much as the anxiety that comes with a government that constantly goes back on itself? How fresh is this approach? It looks similar to the regulations in the old tier systems with longer in between. So will this be different?
I have faith in the public but less so in central government’s ability to clearly define its thought process and be truthful. Regardless of whether No. 10 helps or hinders, other authorities will need to take it upon themselves to get it together and prepare people to follow these restrictions carefully, keep each other safe and get us to the end of this faster.
Maybe I’ll be proven wrong. I’m manifesting that this summer we’ll be with the people we love in a café or a pub and we won’t flinch if we accidentally touch each other.
The vaccination programme is going well, wonderfully even, so it’s not impossible that this will all go to plan. That would be one step in the right direction to correcting the mistakes that have led to the deaths of more than 136,000 people over the past 12 months.